Marceau studied the beast as she approached, flanked by her two doppelgangers, and dismissed the window that blinked into view. It was the same interface he had gained access to upon reaching Gold Core.

The system came with its own script, one he was still in the middle of learning.

[Unable to identify the Creature! Proceed with caution!]

Most times the screen was indispensable, a guide that broke down the abilities of his opponents. Something he had come to appreciate. A necessity when surrounded by foreign paths and cultures, with Goddess only knew what nasty surprises these flea-bitten curs had crammed up their arses. Yet for the first time, it had failed.

Not that Marceau could be bothered to care. The mangy bitch before him was still just low Red Core. Barely worth his boot leather.

Her trick with the doppelgangers was unknown to him, though. They weren't mere illusions… each one was flesh and blood, fully tangible. Yet his life sense told a different story: nothing. They carried no spark of life whatsoever. Two walking husks. The more he studied them, the more his life sense seemed to falter, as if it didn't know how to process their existence. That alone fascinated him. What exactly were these things?

They weren't golems. They weren't undead. They weren't flesh puppets. The only thing they lacked was life, everything else about them was real. Real enough that they were butchering his kin without pause. In the time it took him to blink, the pair had skewered six more.

Granted, they weren't particularly powerful. At best, high Yellow Core. But even so, a single low Red Core should not have had the strength to rip apart a defense-focused Ice Pathwalker like they were kindling.

A troubling puzzle.

"You're bold, I'll give you that much," Marceau said at last. He despised the beast, but marching right before him and cutting down his kind so brazenly… that took nerve. Judging from her confidence, she clearly hadn't realized he was a low Gold.

Oh, how he'd relish the sour milk curdling on that filthy muzzle when realization dawned.

"Oh… well, I do try to be bold," she replied, before clicking her tongue. "But what about you… where is-"

She vanished mid-sentence. An instant later, her draconic face reappeared inches from his own. "-your neck?"

Her claw slashed across his throat, tearing it wide open.

The beast smiled, certain of her kill… only for Marceau's shredded form to crumble into nothing more than a decapitated leaf. His real body materialized behind her.

[Nature's Substitution]

Any wound he took could be exchanged for nature itself.

Still, there were limits. He couldn't use the technique in rapid succession during the day. His eyes lifted wistfully toward the sky. If only the moon were out… his path resonated with it, sharpening his power until he became nearly unstoppable beneath its light. Daylight, by contrast, pressed on him with an oppressive weight he despised.

But even weakened by the sun, a low Red Core would never stand a chance against him.

"Tch. And here I'd hoped we might converse like civilised beings," Marceau sighed, laying a melodramatic hand over his perfectly intact chest. "Yet you dive straight for the jugular. Consider me… utterly heartbroken. Truly."

The beast only shrugged, utterly unfazed that her strike had accomplished nothing, as if she had expected it to fail. Curious.

Marceau's mocking words had barely left his lips before her doppelgangers lunged at him. With the ease of a fish slipping through water, he slid past their strikes. For now, he chose not to retaliate, only to watch. After all, there was no need to exert himself. There was a reason low Golds were counted among the ranks of demigods.

Slowly, deliberately, he set the stage. The forest itself responded to his will. Within fifty meters, trees and grass began to weep blood, their stems and trunks slick with crimson. The trap was already primed. Grinning, he continued to dance away from claws and even a pair of timed breath attacks. This flea-bitten bitch hadn't a clue she was already pacing a gilded cage.

He always preferred horror to bloom slowly.

Not even a minute had passed since his substitution escape, and he was already mapping out their rhythms. The main body was straightforward, her strikes raw and brutal, backed by mana-honed claws and sheer physical force. He couldn't yet pin down the exact nature of her mana, though it carried a strange familiarity. It felt almost like spatial mana, but different. He had tasted spatial essence in the blood of victims before; this was not the same.

Her doppelgangers were another matter entirely. They phased effortlessly through terrain, circling and pressing in, waiting for an opening. Their stealth was impressive as without his life sense, he might have lost track of them more than once. The thought annoyed him somewhat.

He slipped around another volley, fire attacks from their maw that burned hotter than a Red Core should ever muster, and claws that might have torn him apart if not for the resilience of his Gold-core body.

This beast was something else. The more he watched, the calmer she remained under her relentless assault, and the more it gnawed at him. She looked like a low Red Core… his senses confirmed it again when he checked but everything else screamed otherwise.

Her strength, her mana consumption, her presence, there was something off about her.

Piece by piece, he gathered data, dodging, observing, cataloguing. Once he had learned enough, he finally stopped moving. His eyes locked on her, and power swirled through his gaze.

[Gaze of Decay]

Instantly, the beast froze, her body withering as decay bloomed across her form. But she was sharp, she sensed the danger and blinked away, just as her doppelgangers closed in from both sides.

They didn't make it far. The bleeding vines snared them, their phasing useless as thorned tendrils erupted and pierced straight through. Their howls cut short as dozens more lances of blood-soaked wood skewered them into silence.

And then, like smoke, the doppelgangers vanished.

They had wraith-like skills that let them slip into the shadow dimension, turning intangible. Too bad for them, Marceau could still sense life force. Or in the case of the doppelgangers, the complete lack of it. So, when they reappeared, he was already waiting.

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Only this time, they weren't after him.

They tore into his fallen kin instead. Flesh vanished between their jaws, and he watched as the act of feeding knitted their bodies back together. Annoying. Another detail caught his eye, visual distortion. They layered illusions over themselves, creating false afterimages so their true positions were always a fraction removed from where they seemed to be.

Pointless trickery. Marceau wasn't relying on his eyes anyway. His life sense was a hundred times sharper.

It was a talent he shared with them, in a way. He didn't need to gnaw on corpses to recover. He could simply siphon the life force of the forest. Drain beasts, leech the vitality out of trees, bleed the land dry to mend himself. He hadn't lied when he claimed he was unbeatable in a forest.

Deciding to humor the beast further, he poured mana into the land. The forest writhed, surging into [Overgrowth]. The battlefield itself twisted to his will, grass blades turned to razors beneath every step, vines tensed like nooses ready to bleed anything they ensnared. Intangible or not, the net was closing.

Light magic would have helped against creatures of shadows, but light had never been his specialty. And with this beast's sheer agility and unpredictability, he doubted it would make much difference anyway.

Not that it mattered. Shadows and their ilk had never given him a proper challenge. Nature was his element, and shadow-dwellers always broke before his dominion.

Or so it should have been.

Another detail snapped into focus now that the ground was blooming with fungal growths, poisonous vines, and spores thickening the air in a venomous haze. The beast and her copies were… unaffected. Worse, they almost seemed to thrive in the poisonous ambience, moving through it with ease, even vigor. Like pigs in shit. His shit.

That scraped his nerves raw.

Every time one of the three struck, they'd vanish, slipping into the shadow dimension, reappearing somewhere else before his counterattacks could land. He tracked them perfectly, their life signatures clear as daylight, but it didn't matter—intangibility was shielding them. In morning daylight, his own counters lacked the precision to catch them. Night would be different. Under the moon, he was the apex predator.

He could have forced the issue. He had collected more than enough blood to transform into his war form. The thought flickered through his mind, but he immediately crushed it. That kind of surge in mana would draw the attention of the paranoid old vultures ruling Varkaigrad. And the sheer indignity… unleashing his war form to swat a pest? Absurd. Beneath him.

This was meant to be a lesson. A leisurely demonstration of the chasm between god and gutter-beast.

Instead, the bitch's infuriating slipperiness was grinding his aristocratic patience to dust. Not a single scratch marred his perfect form, not one, yet her constant darting, vanishing, reappearing… it was like trying to swat smoke with a silk glove. Maddening.

She wasn't just testing him. She was starting to genuinely piss him off.

[Bloodborn Swarm]

The corpses of every beast he'd collected burst into motion, unraveling into a chittering storm of rot-born insects. The swarm surged toward the beast at breakneck speed, a tide of mandibles and decay.

At the same time, he wove another net.

[Life Tax]

Vitality itself began to bleed out of every living creature within range. The effect was instant, the bitch and her doppelgangers were forced to phase again. But the swarm was everywhere, and Marceau knew precisely where they were. The moment they oozed back, he'd unleash hell. Crush them into bloody paste.

A Red Core, this rot-gnawed gutter-scum, daring to toy with him! If only this cursed sun would set! If only he could unleash the full, glorious savagery of his war form without alerting the entire city!

But even shackled, it didn't matter. He'd grind her into the dirt like the insect she emulated.

Another claw, wreathed in that strange mana, slashed for his throat—only for his body to crumble into a leaf in its place.

Got you.

The rot swarm engulfed her, and her scream rang through the clearing. But even before the sound faded, he knew the truth. Doppelganger.

Fuck.

She was adapting. She wasn't just phasing randomly—she was circling him at blinding speed, slipping in and out of the shadow dimension with purpose. Worse, it was as if she knew about his life sense and was actively working to throw it off. For the first time, the trick was working. His advantage was being whittled down. His head was starting to spin, overwhelmed by how much was happening at once.

How?! HOW was this filthy beast DOING this?!

Would he really need to call on his war form to deal with this filthy beast? Pride screamed no… but her slipperiness, the way she slid through his attacks like a greased eel, made his rage boil over.

He hadn't landed a single, gods-damned scratch.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

His inhumane roar shook the canopy. The forest convulsed with him… eruption after eruption of living growth. The swarm multiplied, a tidal wave of rotting insects. Vines split and bled, the earth itself split apart into gaping maws lined with serrated leaves. The entire battlefield transformed into a nightmare menagerie.

He began shifting into his war form. Bark spread across his skin, mana draining in torrents. Enough! HE WOULD END THIS! Pride be damned. Mission be damned. This bitch had forced his hand. His very being demanded she be ground into fertilizer for the weeds.

But as the change took hold, he froze.

The beast was standing right there. Not fleeing. Not panicked. Confident. Grinning wide enough to split her face, one clawed finger pressed lightly under her jaw.

"USING MANA IS FORBIDDEN HERE."

Immediately, Marceau felt an oppressive weight crash down on him. Without thought, Marceau strangled his mana flow mid-transformation, halting the war form's emergence. Bark receded like a cowardly tide.

That instant of hesitation was a fatal error.

A massive maw clamped down on his arm—the very arm carrying his storage ring. In an instant, everything inside was at risk: the materials for a spatial pocket, teleportation anchors, and, worst of all, the bloodborn technique manual elders had given him after his ascension that he'd been studying.

He screeched, raw fury shredding his composure fully. Barbed vines lashed like whips. The chittering swarm of rot-born insects converged into a buzzing spear. The earth itself snapped shut like a titanic jaw, aiming to crush the filthy beast daring to rob him.

But at the last moment, he caught its grin. And then, the bloodied maw winked out, replaced by yet another lifeless husk of a doppelganger. The substitute was torn apart instead.

A massive bolt of purple lightning slammed into him.

He flickered into a leaf in time, deflecting the strike, but the instant he reappeared, tentacles erupted from every side. They dug into his flesh, biting deep as his roar shook the clearing.

They dared!

His eyes darted. Three doppelgangers. Only three. And yet the real one… was gone. No trace in his life sense. Even the husks around him were flickering, unstable, as if their existence itself was unraveling.

By the time his mind registered the colossal, hideous buildup of mana coalescing somewhere around the flickering doppelgangers—

—it was already far, far too late.

***

Dvina pulled out a muffin. She sniffed it delicately, then dangled it before the gaggle of brats she was "looking after."

"Want one?" she asked sweetly.

The large boy… Rhys, wasn't it? glared back with pure, delicious defiance. Oh, the temptation to snap just one little finger… watch him crumple, teach him respect. Viera, at least, had manners. Sweet girl. Dvina had zero tolerance for undisciplined whelps. Correction was essential. And the wilder the beastling… the more… creative the discipline needed to break it.

Her thoughts, inevitably, slithered to her current favorite obsession: Jade. The utterly feral one. The fascinatingly undisciplined project. Oh, the paces she'd put that creature through once she gets her hands on her. Discipline in its purest forms. Agony. Torment. Exquisite correction. That's how defiance was truly reshaped. Melted down and reforged into perfect, terrified obedience.

But for now… she shrugged. Took a delicate bite. Chewed. Too sweet. Meat ratio insufficient. She'd have… words… with the incompetent chef later.

She was raising the muffin for another bite when the warehouse floor jolted violently beneath her boots. Her eyes narrowed.

Another attack. Already?

In one fluid motion, she snapped her hoversword to hand, leapt onto its humming platform, and shot straight through the warehouse roof, shattering tiles. She streaked skyward. The tremor hadn't come from within the walls. It emanated from the forest perimeter.

When her gaze locked onto the source, for the first time she felt her stomach plummeted into icy depths.

"By the desecrated ancestors…" she breathed, the muffin forgotten, tumbling into the void below.

A vast, smoldering crater sprawled in the forest beyond the city's edge. It had obliterated everything within its radius. An entire swathe of ancient forest… simply erased.

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